Use of mobile computing devices (hereafter “mobile nodes”) such as laptops, notebook computers, personal digital assistants (“PDAs”) and cellular telephones is becoming increasingly popular today. These mobile nodes enable users to move from one location to another (“roam”), while continuing to maintain their connectivity to the same network. Given its increasing popularity, it is unsurprising that most corporate (“enterprise”) networks today attempt to facilitate fast and secure mobile computing.
In order to roam freely, networks today generally conform to mobile IP standards promulgated by the Internet Engineering Task Force (“IETF”). Mobile IPv4 (IETF RFC 3344, August 2002) is currently the predominant standard, and many networks today are Mobile IPv4 compliant. The standard, however, fails to provide solutions to obstacles that arise in certain roaming scenarios.